Abortion Admission from Obama Campaign

After the Civil Forum on the Presidency, hosted by Pastor Rick Warren, Sen. Barack Obama sat down for an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody. Brody asked Obama about a controversy over the candidate's views on abortion. The National Right to Life Committee had unveiled earlier in the week that Obama voted against a bill in the Illinois legislature that would have allowed doctors to give life saving treatment to infants that had survived an attempted abortion. The NLRC said that Obama voted against the bill in committee not once, but three separate times. Obama previously claimed to have voted for the bill.Obama told Brody that his critics were "lying" about his vote.

Brody: Real quick, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I gotta tell you that's the one thing I get a lot of emails about and it's just not just from Evangelicals, it about Catholics, Protestants, main -- they're trying to understand it because there was some literature put out by the National Right to Life Committee. And they're basically saying they felt like you misrepresented your position on that bill.

Obama: Well and because they have not been telling the truth. And I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say --that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level.

Now Obama's answer to Brody is generating an admission from the campaign. Obama was not representing his vote on the bill correctly and he erred in his criticism of the NLRC.

The Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the Illinois bill in question, is nearly identical to a federal version passed in 2002. Both guarantee legal protections to an infant that survives a botched abortion procedure, hence one that is "born alive." Both bills also contain language that affirms the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Obama said during the primaries that he would have supported the federal bill if he was in office at the time it was presented, and that he supported the Illinois bill.

But the NLRC uncovered records of an Illinois Senate committee that Sen. Obama chaired that show Obama voted against the Illinois bill in committee and that he has been misrepresenting his position on the issue ever since.

When Obama was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent criticized him for supporting "infanticide." Obama countered this charge by claiming that he had opposed the state BAIPA because it lacked the pre-birth neutrality clause that had been added to the federal bill. As the Chicago Tribune reported on October 4, 2004, "Obama said that had he been in the U.S. Senate two years ago, he would have voted for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, even though he voted against a state version of the proposal. The federal version was approved; the state version was not. . . . The difference between the state and federal versions, Obama explained, was that the state measure lacked the federal language clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that legalized abortion."

The Obama campaign now admits that Sen. Obama did indeed vote against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the Illinois Senate. A campaign spokesperson told the New York Sun that Obama was concerned that even as worded to protect abortion rights the measure would nonetheless impact on the ability of women to obtain abortions under Illinois law.

This episode could have serious consequences for Obama among Evangelicals and religious voters. For many religious voters, abortion is an issue on which there can be no compromises. Obama tried to strike one by posing as a supporter of life-saving treatment for infants born alive after a failed abortion attempt. And he tried to defend that compromise by accusing one of the most respected national pro-life groups of lying when it revealed his actual record. His position on the born alive bill will cost him support among religious voters, but his false accusations and eventual admission may hurt him more with average voters who expect their candidates to be forthcoming about their positions.